


Take My Hand

by midnightflame



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Love, M/M, Marriage, Marriage Proposal, Married Couple, Married Life, Mentions of Other Voltron Paladins, Post-Canon, Post-Wedding, Vows, Wedding Day, Wedding Fluff, Wedding Rings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 08:42:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17040509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightflame/pseuds/midnightflame
Summary: There are several moments in his life that Keith will always remember. The ones the led to marrying Takashi Shirogane are some of them.





	Take My Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, and welcome to my piece for the [Heartlines Zine](https://twitter.com/HeartlinesZine)! This was such a wonderful project to be part of, and I think it couldn't have come at a better time that we get to share these all with you! Please check out the twitter or the [tumblr](https://heartlineszine.tumblr.com/) site to see some of the other wonderful pieces that went into creating a wedding for Shiro and Keith! Thank you all for reading - I hope you enjoy it! <3
> 
> (And as always, you can find me over on [twitter](https://twitter.com/ByMidnightFlame)!)

“You’ve been holding onto that for a while now.”

Shiro exhales at those words, his gaze drifting from the still of the lake before him to Keith now standing beside him. A smile tugs at his lips, small as uncertain things tend to be, as if afraid of its own potential greatness. He nods and curls his fingers even tighter around the box. In the space of a breath, the entirety of it is swallowed by his palm. Keith says nothing more but merely sets a cup, battered titanium but still capable of holding the hottest of teas, on the table next to him. He remains standing, left hand wrapped around his own mug, and turns his attention toward the lake.

It’s the quietest place Shiro has been able to find that wasn’t his bedroom. Not that that remained quiet for long either, between alarms calling them to battle and the antics of too many souls cooped up for too long in confined spaces. But the planet Frijja had been the closest thing Shiro had found to Earth. In spots, at least. What he remembers most about their first visit here, a diplomatic mission to secure resources for their growing coalition, was the way Keith’s eyes had lit up. It was like watching someone stumble through the darkness, hands groping along the walls until suddenly, light! 

Seeing Keith at that moment had been no different than opening his eyes and realizing he had come home. 

Maybe it was the mountains, their peaks as tall as any on Earth’s, the rocks a kaleidoscopic glitter beneath the sun’s rays. That is something Shiro had never seen back home: land made of ever-shifting rainbow. They said in one part due to the organisms that lived in the soil, another part due to the mix of elements. In the distance, he had caught the familiar glint of water, surrounded by the dark green and royal purples of the planet’s forests. That is where Keith had trained his gaze. It was the last sight he took in before they had left.

And it is the place that Shiro had brought Keith to three days ago to start the beginning of their lives.

He clears his throat, thumb rolling over the smooth surface of the box. It’s a small, square thing with black lacquered walls and a tiny gash dug out of the right corner. That’s the spot his thumb seems to find, again and again, running over the divot as though some part of him might fill it in and make it whole once more. Shiro knows better than that, but it doesn’t stop him from tracing the edges of the wound. The box had come to him like that, though the shop owner had tried his best to coax him into selecting another one from what was, quite frankly, a rather garish assortment. The green one, in particular, had looked like something Christmas might have thrown up on New Year’s morning.

“Thank you. . .”

Shiro tips his head toward Keith, eyebrow lifting. “For what?”

“For bringing me here. You remembered. . .”

A smile threatens to take over his mouth. With a slow exhale, Shiro turns his gaze out on the lake once more. Beneath this planet’s sun, which burns more orange than yellow, the water glitters like fire-dusted sapphires. “I couldn’t forget the look on your face, Keith. Both when you saw this place for the first time, and as we were leaving it.”

Keith laughs, a quiet sound that sinks right into Shiro’s memory banks. Something he would carry within him forever. That much Shiro could trust. 

“I wanted to stay here. Not forever, or anything. . .I know we have work still to do. But, this place made me feel like I could find myself again.”

“. . .Were you lost?”

“No. . .but you know how it is, Shiro. All the battles, the paperwork...all this dancing around coalition lines, wondering who is going to want what next and how are we going to actually supply it. And then having to say no, and realizing the cost of that word sometimes. . .”

Shiro answers with a soft grunt, knowing how little there is to be said in reply to such an admission. Because he understands, just as much as Keith apparently does, that there are consequences you can’t hide from, the same ones that make you question just who you are in those rare moments of quiet afforded to those trying to create order out of chaos. And maybe there are those among them who would argue that the universe itself is nothing more than the playground of Chaos. Shiro had thought that once, back when his memories were the last thing he could have faith in. But those who believed such a thing. . .they would be wrong. _He_ had been wrong. Upheaval happens, and not always kindly at that, but Chaos is never holding the reins at the end. 

Perhaps that’s the real damning thing about it though. That an element so disruptive always loses control over itself, is always at the mercy of Order. In the end, something comes along to ground the universe and all the specks that make it up, and life keeps marching forward. 

“I know we’re on leave,” Keith continues quietly. He pauses then to touch the tip of a canine tooth with his tongue. Maybe probing it to test its sharpness as compared to the edge his words might carry. The whole idea of it - sharp points and sharper words - disintegrates when he starts to smile, a laugh puffing out into the air as his lips part. “. . .Why did you bring me here, Takashi?”

First names. A real name. Shiro rarely heard it used. The last time had been after their return to Earth when his own Garrison file had been read back to him and the questions lined up like assault rifles waiting to be tested against a proper target. _Takashi_ brings up a lot of things for him (just like the Black Paladin title, which is another story even if it is intricately linked to the man standing beside him), but when the name falls from Keith’s lips, it always comes with a smile known only to love. Seeing it reminds Shiro how to still be soft in a world that wanted to bleed the very notion out of him. Replace it, part by part, until the idea of love could no longer move his human heart. 

That particular world had failed all because Keith hadn’t. 

He clears his throat quietly. His heart rate quickens. His fingers close in around the box like a net trying to salvage lost memories in a storm-troubled sea. Keith had said ‘Takashi,’ and Shiro knows he wanted honesty. As if Shiro had ever denied him that sort of thing, but he understood it too - no dancing around the subject, no sugarcoating, no playing things off or acting like he had it all together. Keith wants everything that is human in him.

When he tries to speak, the syllables collide on the edge of his tongue and come out as a garbled huff of unintelligible sound. Keith laughs. Shiro starts laughing along with him, though his heart keeps hammering in his chest and the box feels like it’s carrying all the crushing weight that makes diamonds out of carbon and soldiers out of youths. He runs his thumb over the chipped edge again. 

“I, umm. . .” Shiro begins. Keith is looking at him, not at all expectant, but with a quiet confidence that whispers of devotion and patience. His eyes though. . .how startling they are right now in color. This deep, star-spawning sort of purple-blue. He drops his gaze briefly and starts laughing all over again. Soft and strained. “I can’t imagine my life without you, Keith. I. . .don’t think I’ve ever really told you that.”

Keith gives a little hum for that and bumps his shoulder lightly against Shiro’s. Encouragement, he realizes. Shiro takes a breath. As he picks up the cup of tea left for him on the table, he leaves the box behind. It sits there, sunlight gilding its surface. A perfect weapon against his own heart. 

Chancing a look over, Shiro sees the slight part of Keith’s lips, brought about by surprise. He glances back at Shiro, eyebrow quirked and this funny little twist to the corner of his mouth that makes Shiro’s heart flutter from anticipation. Keith sets his cup down alongside the box and slips his opposite hand into Shiro’s now empty one. He runs his index finger along its top, pausing when he finds the divot, and as Keith traces the lines marring the surface there, he starts to slink his fingers one by one in between Shiro’s until they’re completely entwined. 

“Nice box,” Keith says.

Shiro can’t help but note the way that twist has worked Keith’s mouth into this half-cocked smile. “I’ve heard you had a thing for black. . .”

Fingers pulse tight around his hand. Shiro answers it with a squeeze of his own. That seems to set something in motion because Keith tosses him a look that’s nothing but unabashed joy. He flips open the lid of the box and goes completely and utterly silent. Staring up at them both is a ring, planted in a shimmering silver cushion. The sunlight sets its obsidian gleaming as if conjuring stars out of the night sky. A thin band of silver courses along its center. Keith runs his thumb along the outer line of Shiro’s thumb. Over and over and over again. 

“Yes,” Keith finally says, his voice a bare whisper, raw as only an open heart can make one sound. 

Shiro sucks in a breath. His head is swimming, and Keith’s hand is comforting against his own, and there are a million different ways he thinks he can take that word though he knows only one of them is right. “Yes, you like black -”

“Yes as in yes, Takashi,” Keith interjects. 

Solid and undeniable. A real _yes_.

Shiro licks his lips and blinks as the sunlight crowns the mountain tops, pulling its reach from the lake’s surface. His heart is still beating, lost somewhere in his chest to the tide of emotion welling up within him, and he can still feel the way Keith’s thumb keeps rolling over his skin, and like an apparition finding solid form, the words finally drop from his lips. “You’re going to marry me. . .”

“I think that’s what I said yes to. . .”

A laugh bursts on his tongue, light as a hummingbird but just as effusive in its life. “We’re getting married.”

*

“You’re sure about this?”

“Lance, for the hundredth time, I’m sure!”

“I dunno, Keith, they say it’s bad luck and all to look at your bride on your wedding day. . .”

“First off, stop calling Shiro my bride. We’re just. . .us, got it? And secondly, I’m not going to _actually_ see him.”

Lance makes a gesture with his hands, somewhere between the universal sign for whatever and offering his middle finger as a salute. His tie dangles, undone, down the front of his chest, a vivid red against the crisp white of his shirt, and Keith considers not for the second time that morning how sturdy a noose it could potentially make. Granted, he also imagines there must be some sort of ancient curse attached to the act of strangling one of your groomsmen on the morning of your wedding. Five years shit luck at sea? No orgasm on your wedding night? All the bats of hell spewing from some hidden trench in the earth as a prelude to the impending apocalypse you just unleashed? 

Rather than debate the matter, Lance snags a glass of champagne from the tray set on the dresser instead. It has a sleek silver finish, a perfectly polished glass top, and plays home to more champagne flutes filled to the brim than people currently in the resort room. Keith has also weighed the pros and cons of downing several of them, but Pidge had reminded him of his lack of breakfast and the travesty that puking on Shiro during their vows would be. 

It’s not that he’s nervous. 

“Keith?”

“What, Lance?” he snipes, irritation biting into the name.

Lance says nothing. Simply stares like a man resurrected from the dead when all he had wanted in life was to die. He glances down at his hand, brushes his knuckles against his jacket, then turns his gaze on Keith again. “First off, we’re getting you something to eat because no one likes a hangry bride.”

“ _Lance_ . .”

Fair warning. Also, he’s nervous. He is definitely nervous, or else someone had set a bewildered sparrow free in his chest, and it keeps careening against his ribcage trying to find the nearest exit.

“Secondly, if you’re going to do this thing, you’re going to need to do it soon. Coran is supposed to take you down the aisle in an hour.”

Keith looks around him as those words slowly settle in his mind. Lance has propped himself up against the back of the couch, just an arm’s reach away. The doors to his private patio are still open. Through them, Keith can already feel the slight chill climbing into the desert air. His bed is pristinely made, and all around him, the world is colored various shades of white and tan, supposedly a soothing gesture for those trying to escape their hectic schedules and daily torments. Only the rug on the floor offers any variety, with a distressed diamond-work pattern of alternating black and white. Apparently, it was from a local craftsman. Why Keith remembers that as the selling point of this room, he doesn’t know, but it suddenly brings the world back into focus. 

He nods at Lance. 

The gesture earns him a bright smile and a clap on his back, one of the too-hard variety that makes his heart stutter-step and his thoughts rattle. “That’s more like it, buddy! Now, eat that bowl of fruit while I go get your husband-to-be.”

Another nod as Keith shifts his attention to the fruit. It sits among an assortment of food meant to tide over appetites as the wedding party readied itself for the main event: mini grilled cheese sandwiches made with a mix of gruyere and cheddar, shots of chilled cucumber soup, skewers that resembled Caprese salad but were composed of entirely foreign ingredients Keith couldn’t name, bacon mac-and-cheese scooped into single-serving dishes, and miniature martini glasses filled with sliced fruit shipped into from all over the universe. Hunk had encouraged providing a varied menu, given the range of palates among their wedding guests. Their own personal tastes had come through in the selection of homestyle melted cheese dishes; Keith had asked for the sandwiches while Shiro had insisted on the mac-and-cheese boats. (The suggestion of bacon had made him light up in ways Keith usually only associated with the bedroom. He had taken no offense though it didn’t stop him from pointing it out later that night. Shiro had simply explained that an appetite was an appetite, but he would take Keith over bacon any day.) The food layout is part of the hors d’oeuvres that would be passed around during the cocktail hour. During which he and Shiro would take to their hover bikes to get their wedding photos in the last of the desert sunlight. 

Even weddings had a proper protocol. Keith feels like he might be happy to have the hour away from it all.

He picks up one of the grilled cheese bites and pops it into his mouth. The room itself seems far too clean for a wedding day, and there’s something in the lack of disarray that unnerves him. Or maybe it’s merely the nervousness itself trying to find a reason for existence other than he’s getting married. Which isn’t really the issue, honestly speaking. He would have married Shiro the moment he had been proposed to, but Keith knows there are procedures to be followed for to these sorts of things, and with them being two of the biggest figures tied to the universe’s fate (now supposedly set on an even keel with the Galra signing off on the last of the peace treaties), there was no escaping some dance and show routine for their vows. There had been strict agreements though - no public broadcasting, no reporters. Just friends and families and a few choice diplomats. Photographers, as chosen by them, would be given room to snap away and those photos would eventually make the news circuits. 

So, maybe it isn’t the lack of a mess in here. It’s everything going out on there, beyond the reach of his sight and hearing. The things Keith knows are buzzing about like bees readying for an attack. Never mind the nectar blooming from the ground below. Because the political landscape has proven itself to be just another battleground, and the marriage between two Paladins, two heroes of a war not yet buried in Memory’s graveyard, is the sort of thing that could make or break a burgeoning universal peace. At least, that’s what certain factions liked to make the general populaces think. It’s the sort of thing the news outlets kicked up a fuss about, their headlines picking away at Keith’s heritage or Shiro’s various trials and tribulations. 

All the things that remind Keith that the best sanctuary in this world has always been the quiet of home that existed between him and Shiro. 

He side-eyes the fruit, then finally picks up one of the cups with a resigned sigh. All throughout the morning, his appetite has vacillated from ravenous to stomach-emptying nausea, shifting from one to the other as rapidly as politicians shuffled their wording to suit the current social climate. At this moment, however, he’s hungry. Quite possibly because the very absence of Lance has left him bereft of tasks and entirely alone, unless one counts their own reflection, and Keith’s not feeling very talkative. He’s almost ready though - that’s what a glance at the mirrored doors of the closet tells him. His tie is knotted, his shoes are polished to a lacquered shine, and his hair has even been thoroughly combed and swept back. As he turns to survey himself, he notes the scar along his right cheek, and how the color of his tie seems to compliment it. A faint pink against the deep red of a blood moon. Keith pops a grape into his mouth. The scar stays put. So does the tie.

Then comes a knock at the door. It’s a gentle sound, asking permission more than announcing a presence. He starts smiling despite himself, his hunger dissipating like a ghost before the first sparks of daylight. 

“Keith?”

The smile grows wider. Abandoning the fruit cup on the table, half-eaten and entirely forgotten, Keith makes his way towards the door. When he opens it, however, it’s barely a crack.

“Shiro. . .” The name is flooded with relief, surprising himself in the process. How much has been pent up within him? For how long? And just how much of it drained out of him the moment he heard Shiro’s voice? 

In that one moment, he realizes how things go completely right again in the world, even if it’s all still falling to hell around him. 

“Hey there,” Shiro says quietly. 

Keith can hear the smile in his voice, and it makes him ache to see it. Instead, he opens the door a fraction wider, just enough to curve his hand around the edge of it. “Hey. . .”

“You doing all right? Lance said you wanted me to come over. . .”

When Shiro speaks, it’s like hearing the world bow to silence. Not that world-ending, cataclysmic sort of silence, but what arrives when everything you could have wanted in the world finally comes home to you. When Shiro speaks, Keith finds himself again.

“Just one last time before this whole circus starts.”

Shiro laughs at that. Soft, intimate. Keith feels it soaking into his very marrow. 

“Well, here I am, Keith. Just as you asked.”

He nods at that. “Stay on the other side of the door, okay? I don’t. . .want to see you yet. I just needed. . .”

“I know.”

“Yeah…”

Silence returns. Keith sets his forehead against the door and imagines Shiro standing on the other side of it, a man he knows but will see for the first time in less than an hour. As his eyes begin to close, his mind absorbing the idea of it all, Keith feels Shiro’s fingers touching against the tips of his own. Inquisitive. Gentle. Asking again, rather than simply taking. Keith drums his fingers, one after the other in succession, and as each one sets back down, Shiro slides his own into the space between them. He turns his head then, cheek now pressed flat to the door, and opens his eyes. 

These are the moments when none of it matters. Peace treaties. Coalitions. Photo-ops. Who was really right or wrong, or just how gray the gray areas really got. None of it mattered. Not when he’s standing here, with every bit of life he’s ever had to call his own, with every bit of existence that has tied itself to his now waiting on the other side of this door. Call it the neat stitch work of fate, or simply serendipity. Maybe it was none of those, or perhaps a bit of both. 

Or maybe it was just finding the right person at the right time and never losing faith in what they were. 

“Marry me, Keith,” Shiro says softly. Simply, like a man ready to hand over everything he is. No regrets.

It’s Keith who laughs then. “Always, Takashi.”

*

“Is it everything you imagined it would be?”

Shiro smiles at that and takes another step closer to Keith. Above them, the daylight has given way to the first breath of night. A cloudless expanse of navy-painted sky, the horizon burning gold, the stars just starting to turn their gazes down to the earth. His eyes meet Keith’s, and for a long moment, Shiro says nothing. Merely stares as his hand tightens around Keith’s and they move across the desert floor to a song neither of them hears but each knows the steps to intimately enough. 

It’s simply them. Every note, every beat of a heart. . .in the quiet of the evening, surrounded by sand and grit, the white blooms of cacti, and a symphony of stars, Shiro knows there is nothing more he needs to know at this moment. This is everything.

“Yes,” he murmurs.

The corner of Keith’s mouth twitches. Seconds later, Shiro watches as a smile slowly works its way over his lips. It gives him that same sort of thrill that seeing the first missions into space had, only infinitely more beautiful. A soul-stirring, heart-waking sort of ache that Shiro has never forgotten. Never wants to forget. It’s sights like this, after all, that keep you clinging onto life. 

A laugh finally breaks through Keith’s smile as he leans up and kisses Shiro lightly. “I can’t believe you cried during our vows. . .”

“That was five years ago,” he replies, stealing another quick kiss. 

“And today. You can’t hide that from me, Shiro. . .”

There’s something almost devious in the way Keith looks at him then. A spark in his eyes, brighter than Sirius, hotter than the dog days of summer. As if there really isn’t anything Shiro could keep hidden from him, like their souls were so intricately interwoven it would take a thousand lifetimes just to unravel them from one another. 

“Then you underestimated how much that moment meant to me. I thought I would never have that chance, but you never gave up on me. . .”

The light softens in Keith’s eyes then, and the edges of his smile take a turn for the gentle. Another moment with nothing spoken. Shiro continues to guide them across the desert, skirting the edges of the fire. He’s experienced a lot of silence in his life with Keith, from the tension-taut to the kind you can live within like a second house. This one right here. . .it’s thick with memory. A solid silence that Shiro can feel, like a brick in his hand or a body warm against his own. 

“I don’t think I could imagine my life without you, Shiro,” Keith murmurs against his neck. 

Shiro feels those words too, all the weight they carry, the lifetime that sits behind them. 

“You would have done fine. . .”

And he believes that. He had always believed that. Until the universe turned his world upside down and delivered him a world of potentials he had thought long lost to him, Shiro had always believed Keith would do fine long after the deterioration of all that he had been. His end had been an inevitability for so long, Shiro had been making as many contingency plans as he thought minutes he had left to make a real life from. . .and then Kerberos came along and knocked him out of his old orbit. 

Only Keith came crashing right back into the new one, putting himself there alongside him like a moon that knew only how to shadow one planet and one planet alone. 

They make another turn around the campfire, their steps as seamless as before, their hearts still perfectly aligned. Shiro can’t seem to look away from the man in his arms. But perhaps that’s always been another inevitability. 

As they continue their dance, Keith shakes his head. A complete denial of Shiro’s previous statement. “I needed you not just as a mentor or as someone who could help save us all in that war. . .I needed you because you are a part of who I was. . .who I am. . .my heart would never have recovered without you.”

That’s the trouble with loving someone so completely. When they go, the devastation leaves so much shrapnel in your heart you’re left digging out the pieces until it expires as well. Shiro believes those words, with all the history that sits behind them. Keith would have lived, but the recovery. . .

“Then, it’s a good thing you kept coming back for me,” Shiro says quietly against Keith’s temple. He wants to kiss him; he really does. Instead, Shiro pulls back slightly so he can bring their hands between them. He still keeps them moving, swaying with each step, even as he drops his gaze to the hold he has over Keith’s hand. 

“As many times as it takes, Takashi.”

Shiro feels the smile tug at his lips then. Firelight glints orange over their rings. With an exhale, he runs his thumb along Keith’s, tracing the thin silver band around its center. “You have me, Keith. Now and forever. . .”

Above them, the sky grows darker, the stars shine brighter, and the world holds its tongue. 

“Five years from now, you’ll have me still. . .and the decade after that. . .” he continues, lacing their fingers together one by one. “There is no time left for me in this universe that is not yours as well. . .”

He hears the way Keith’s breath hitches at that. When he glances up, it’s not him looking out through a veil of tears, but Keith, whose lashline glimmers with a heart’s greatest hope. Forever. Always. The words so many like to toss around but rarely are they ever meant. Keith nods at him, then pulls their hands to his mouth and sets a kiss against Shiro’s ring. 

“When. . .” he starts, only to stop with a broken laugh. The sound of it pierces Shiro’s soul, and he knows it then, all the ways Keith has courted loss, and how this moment is in direct defiance of all of that. He glances up at Shiro and laughs once more. “Tell me again, Shiro. . .”

That’s the moment his thoughts catch on his heart and all Shiro can do is stare. He knows what Keith is asking for with that single glance, but he doesn’t say it at first. Instead, he leans forward and presses his lips to Keith’s forehead. And then, slowly, like the first unfurling of petals under the moon’s glow, Shiro begins to speak.

“. . .for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. . .there is nothing of me that is not yours, Keith. My heart, my soul. . .you are everything that I love. The very light of my existence, and not even death can diminish that. For now and beyond, in this universe and the next, I am yours.”


End file.
